Human Resource Management: Organizations, People and Performance - Assignment Example

Human Resource Management: Organizations, People and Performance al Affiliation Question Primary Competitive Business Strategy The goal of 118118 as a business is to deliver crucial information to its customers as quickly and accurately as possible. The enterprise also visualizes enhancing the availability of personal loans to the service users. 1118118 provides a variety of services and products to its customers by means of instant processing at fixed charges. Its market of operation is quite dynamic and thus it has to compete with several other service providers both directly and indirectly. Some of the major rivals which it has to compete with in the UK market include search engines, BT, Directing enquiries UK, Orange, Siri and Apple iPhone. In order to enhance its operations and profitability, the organization has relied on a cost leadership business approach. Cohn, Khurana & Reeves (2005) defines this approach a strategy that allows companies to be the lowest cost production organizations in a sector or industry. 118118 charges low prices for the services offered since the production costs have been greatly reduced by the efficient operation systems and procedures it has implemented. According to Child (2005), service businesses usually have two ways of boosting their profits. They do this by increasing the sales or reducing the costs. The organization has chosen the latter and focuses on coming up with innovative and less costly services that are more valuable to the customers. By doing this, it is able to increase the level of customer satisfaction. Cohn, Khurana & Reeves (2005) points out that innovativeness and high quality of service in most instances translate to low consumer prices. Thus, the firm’s ability to undercut the competitor’s charges by having effective and innovative prices increases its market share. The innovation levels have also given it good reputation and allowed it to respond quickly to the client needs. This is in addition to its ability to provide a wide range of services all-round the clock. Moreover, it allows for the use of multiplatform for services. According to Torrington, Hall, Taylor & Atkinson, (2014), a business which increases the customer satisfaction level by giving quality services at the required time and through the required means is not only able to gain a larger market share but also ensures that there is repeat buying of its services. Such strategies give it an upper hand in an already dynamic and competitive sector. 118118 is a red ocean company and it therefore strives to outperform the other industry players to gain a bigger portion of the existing demand for the serves’ that it is providing. Since its market space is a bit crowded due to the presence of several other direct and indirect rivals, its prospects for profits appear to be reduced. Child (2005), states that in such a market, the boundaries are delineated and accepted and the competitive rules are known. This is why 118118 tries to outdo its rivals through cost leadership and innovativeness to grab a bigger share of the current demand for the line of services it deals in. The success of cost leadership competitive approach is affected by a variety of human resources issues. They can generally be grouped into the people challenges and the organizational challenges. 118118’s people challenges include the lack of skilled workers and communication barriers which impacts on the flow of information. On the other hand, the organizational challenges which hinder the ability of the firm to effectively use cost leadership to increase its market share include cultural differences, brand recognition issues and failure to meet customer needs due to the misunderstanding of the needs. Grey (2005) says that when a firm is unable to deal with its organizational and people HR challenges, its ability to have a competitive edge over its rivals is compromised. This is the reason why 118118 may be playing catch up to the major players in the industry such as Google. Strategic Human Resource Management 118118 engages in strategic human resources management in order to deal with the human resource issues that it may be facing in the course of its operations. Human resource is taken as a major company asset and plays a very integral role in the success and profitability of the company. The first aspect of strategic human resource management at the company is the recruitment and selection. Torrington, Hall, Taylor & Atkinson, (2014) states that management of human resource begins when a company goes into the market to look for people to hire to carry out certain duties and play specific roles. The benefits that the firm will obtain will depend on how well it carries out its recruitment and selection process. 118118 takes this into consideration and recruits employees with finance backgrounds. Having employees with this kind of background not only brings the needed experience but also reduces the time taken for them to integrate into the existing company structures and processes. It also recruits people with experience in call receiving as well as those with IT knowledge to work on its database and meet its IT needs. The second aspect is HRD training. Such trainings are meant to give employees knowledge that is key to their performance. Companies which provide such trainings are able to derive more from their workforce than those which do not. 118118 does this through training on communication skills, work efficiency, enterprise culture and mannerism training. Reward recognition based in the customer feedback is also incorporated into its strategy. 118118’s SHRM also encompasses performance management (Grey, 2005). This is done to gauge how the employees are fulfilling their roles. Employee performance management focuses on the establishment of shared underlying goals among the workforces in order to ensure that the goals are achieved at an organizational level. This is only possible when its objective are aligned with the agreed measures like skills and competencies, plans for development and meeting of targets.118118’s performance management focuses not only on improvement of service delivery but also on learning and development so that the organization’s overall competitive business model of cost leadership is achieved. Moreover, it has created a high performing workforce to allow it to provide quality services and command a sizable market share. According to Grey (2005), performance management ensures that the set goals of a company are stuck. 118118 approach to SHRM also involves delegation of responsibilities and planning for career development. According to Heskett, Sasser, Leonard & Schlesinger (1997) delegation is a process where work related tasks are turned over to subordinates. Majority of businesses have a lot of difficulties in delegating tasks and authority for various reason and this denies the subordinates the chance to gain hands-on experience in management. Being a business which is founded on creative talent of the proprietors, 118118 may be expected to have difficulty in using this aspect of SHRM. However, this is not the case as the success of the firm no longer depends on the creativity and the management style of the proprietors. Delegation allows the company to boost employee morale by allowing them to contribute to the success of the firm in a meaningful way. It has also helped in preventing burnout. 118118 has talented and energetic employees and in order to ensure that they do not run out of their abilities, delegations is employed at various levels of operation with the intention of allowing the workers to grow gradually to be able to meet the changing demand of their roles. Competitive Business Strategy and Address the HR Issues and Challenges Strategic human resource management enhances the competitive business approach which the firm is using by providing a means through which various human resource challenges are addressed. Cost leadership requires the use of the most effective and least costly procedures in service delivery. This in turn requires innovativeness. Through employee training and performance management, it is possible to ensure that the firm has a high level workforce which is not only effective but also capable of coming up with the best methods of low cost operation. This is further enhanced by delegation of duties which allows the workers to obtain the experience needed to gain more market share. The people challenges such as communication barriers and lack of skills can be handled through the selection and recruitment and training aspects of SHRM (Mullins, 2013). Training imparts the needed skills to the employees and this ensures that they are able to perform their duties as expected so that the overall objectives and goals of the firm can be achieved. The organizational challenges such as the inability to capture the needs of the customers can on the other hand be handled by means of careful job definition and recruiting the most qualified candidates to occupy positions dealing with the consumer needs. Such methods take into account the changes expected in the near future and the options available to train the employees on the changing trends. When this is done, 118118 will be able to effectively use the cost leadership approach in the UK market and increase its share. With time, this will translate to more revenue and profits thus allowing it to grow. Question 2: Organizational Culture and Values Importance of Addressing Organizational Culture and Values Organizational culture and values is very essential to the performance and profitability of the businesses. Businesses can only achieve very little even with the use of excellent technology and other resources if the issues and challenges associated with organization culture are not tackled. Being a service provision company, how the employees interact with each other and with the customers and service users affect the success of the firm and its ability to achieve its objectives and goals. Research evidence shows that organizational culture and HR practices affect the efficiency of a company. Child (2005) says that there is a clear correlation between the culture of an organization and the HR practices and in some instance misalignment of the two may have detrimental effects on the performance of the worker. This is why it is imperative for 118118 to look into its practices with the aim of aligning them with the goals and objectives of the organization. One of the major organization culture problems related to reputations being faced by 118118 is poor communication. This is both a people challenge and an organizational challenge. The employees are unable to grasp the needs of the customers due to the communication problem inherent in the company. Such instances lead to low customer satisfaction. Employees may not communicate well with one another. In some cases, the problem arises when they feel unable to approach their supervisors with various ideas and suggestions relating to their duties and tasks.118118 has no clearly articulated goals and expectations and this makes the staff members somehow confused about what they are supposed to be doing. The confusion affects their level of productivity, efficiency and commitment to the company. According to Grey (2005), such scenarios may also lead to the employees seeking newer opportunities where they realize their objectives guided by clearly articulated expectations provided for by the employer. The other organizational culture related to reputation which may be affecting the operations of 118118 is the difference in priorities. Employees may have different priorities with those of the organization in instances where there are no clear guidelines to direct this. They may feel that the company may be focusing too much on revenue by forcing them to work for long periods of time. This forces them to forgo the rights to break and be on overtime. Such practices cause resentfulness among workers thereby affecting their performance. Such trend can only be reversed with the effective strategic human resource managements. Addressing Organizational Culture Challenges Organization culture is a coherent pattern of values which evolves from past practices and challenges. They represent a very vital contextual factor which has the capability of fostering effective means of knowledge through effective communication mechanisms in the business. In addressing such reputation problems, focus needs to be put on the way the firm relates to its employees and how the employees relate to each other. This way the values regarding the relationships can be understood and used to determine the best SHRM practice will effectively tackle those which hinder the successful operation of the business. According to Child (2005), there are several HR blueprints that reflect on the HRM policies used and are quite evident in the operations of 118118. Whether the employment relationships are short term or long term, the mutual commitment that is created should be purely economic and have significant element of social exchange. HRD Training Dealing with the organization culture issue facing 118118 requires the initiation of HRD training. Training and development is a key HRM function which is concerned with the various activities meant to better performance of the workers. Using this particular SHRM aspect requires consideration of three main activities. They are training, education and development. Training and development activities are focused and evaluated against the job that an employee currently does. Education activities are those which focus on the future capabilities and potential of the employees (Mullins, 2013). Development, in contrast, tends to put emphasis on the activities that an organization will be employing to improve the future capabilities of the workers. When addressing the challenges of organizational culture and reputational issues, it is imperative for 118118 to determine and categorize the various stakeholders involved in the process. They are generally classified as the sponsor of the training, the users and the clients of the training. The sponsors are the senior managers of the firm while the clients are the business planners. The line managers at the organization will play a key role in coaching, providing resources and evaluating performance. The other stakeholders are the participants who are the employees undergoing the process. The HRD training required in 118118 should be focus on four major aspects. These are training on communication skills, enterprise culture, work efficiency and training on manners. Good communication among the coworkers gives the employees access to vital information needed for their operations. The training will, therefore, require focusing on communication as the basis of effective working. Communication skills training require the exploitation of new knowledge opportunities and integrating them into the existing knowledge. It moves knowledge from individual level to organizational level and thus requires the participation of multiple individuals in the organization. The second aspect of the training is on the worker efficiency. Worker efficiency is affected by several issues including how they relate with each other. Employees require training on best practices that will enhance their efficiency. Diane (2005), states that the prevailing culture may have a negative impact on the performance of employees when they do not promote efficiency. As such alteration of such practice is needed through the best available training methods. Involvement of others in HRD training is requisite so that the resources for developing and also testing the new information gained are availed. To be able to achieve positive evaluation and get the needed results, managerial support and participation is also needed. Rewarding and Recognizing Employees Rewards play a key role in aligning the goals and objectives of the organization with the existing culture. This means that it this aspect of SHRM can be used by 118118 to deal with concerns that could have an undesirable impact on its efficiency, profitability and effectiveness. Ref states that reward recognition in service business is effective when it is done on the basis of feedback given from the customers. This is because customer experience is relevant to such kinds of businesses. Unlike businesses dealing in tangible goods, service provision businesses rely on the experience that the consumers get while using the services to be able to measure their success and the level of satisfaction. Each and every consumer has his own expectations on the level of service quality that they expect from the company. However, Buchanan & Huczynski (2013) says that there are specific levels of service quality which automatically leads to some kind of consumer satisfaction. Employees are therefore required to strive to meet such targets of service delivery. Heskett, Sasser, Leonard & Schlesinger (1997) identifies reward as a very key practice and model for ensuring the organizational culture is changed and transformed towards practices which will ensure that clients are satisfied with the services they get from 118118. Grey (2005) cautions that the process will only be effective in altering and streamlining the organizational culture with the goals and objectives of the business if it is done on the basis of what is expected of the workers and the levels of customer satisfaction. When clients give feedback on the nature and quality of services that they obtained from the company, it can be used to determine the employees who are playing major roles in ensuring that the business culture is in line with the vision and mission of the company. The other aspect of HRM which is required to deal with the organization challenges that may be facing 118118 is group rewards. Group rewards are meant to boost the morale and performance of the various groups based on their capacity to gratify the requirements of the clients. It is also supposed to be done on the basis of the feedback got from the customers using the various services offered. When giving groups rewards, it is imperative to carry out a reevaluation and monitoring process to guarantee that the aims of the trade are achieved. According to Torrington, Hall, Taylor & Atkinson, (2014) rewards ensures that the collective interest of the employees and the interested of the business are aligned with the performance and achievement goals. As employees strive to perform better to attain the quality of services needed to qualify for the group rewards, the ability of the firm to ensure that its organizational culture does not compromise its reputations is ensured. Performance Management Dealing with organizational culture and values in the business requires the use of performance management approaches. This applies to all companies irrespective of whether they are big or small. Diane (2005) remarks that there is no one particular way of effectively managing the performance of the employees so that they can ensure that the prevailing culture supports and is in line with the goals of the employees and those of the employer. Therefore, the focus should be on effectively applying and consistently utilizing the selected means of performance management. In the case of 118118, the most aspect or approach will ensure that the firm’s values and culture contribute towards the overall success of the business is through setting of goals and sticking to these set targets until the intended objectives are achieved. Torrington, Hall, Taylor & Atkinson, (2014) says that setting goals and having standard brings about threshold for employee performance thus playing a key role in the assessment, improvement and changing of employee and employer values and culture. Goal setting is the foundation of the effectiveness of the company and therefore the creation of effective standards should be an integral aspect of human resource management in the company. When a company does this, it will be constantly ensuring and monitoring how the existing culture impact on the productivity of the worker. When they do this, it is possible to initiate changes at all levels of employment which will ensure that the set thresholds of performance are met. Those practices which are deemed to be a barrier to the achievement of the threshold performance need to be discarded and substituted with more effective practices. When doing so, it will be important for 118118 managers to give the process the needed support. Without their support, the employees who are meant to benefit from it may see it as an approach meant only for them and not for the achievement of the goals of the business and they will therefore have little interest in it. Reference List Buchanan, D & Huczynski, A 2013, Organizational Behavior: An Introductory Text. Prentice Hall, New York. Child, J 2005, Organization: Contemporary Principles and Practice. Blackwell, Oxford. Cohn J, Khurana, R & Reeves, L 2005, ‘Growing talent as if your business depended on it’. Harvard Business Review , vol. 83, no. 10, pp. 62–70. Diane, A 2005, Managing Human Resources in Small & Mid-Sized Companies. Pearson, New York. Grey, C 2005, Studying Organizations. Sage, London. Heskett, J, Sasser, E, Leonard, R, & Schlesinger, A 1997, The Service Profit Chain. Free Press, London. Mullins, J 2013, Management and Organizational Behavior. Prentice Hall, New York. Torrington, D, Hall, L, Taylor, S & Atkinson, C 2014, Human Resource Management. Pearson, New York. Read More